Six years ago Emma Hayes stood at a major crossroads in her life. Having just helped Arsenal Ladies to complete an historic quadruple in winning the Uefa Cup as assistant coach to the legendary Vic Akers, she was faced with job offers from three different football clubs. Hayes had no idea which one to go for.

One of her mentors recommended that she see a clairvoyant. The 37-year-old laughs at the memory of it now, “but I’d just had three unbelievable offers, three very confusing offers – to take over from Vic at Arsenal, or go to America and coach Chicago Red Stars or St Louis. I walked into the room, sat down and this woman turned the cards over. She said: ‘It’s none of them. You’re going to have an absolutely massive future with Chelsea.’” Hayes chose Arsenal. Then, in a panic, ran home through the rain and phoned Chicago. She had changed her mind.

It would be another four years before Chelsea came knocking. The current Chelsea Ladies manager cackles. “Can you imagine my face when [in 2012] I then got that phone call from Chelsea? It was so bizarre. I’ve never accepted a job as quickly as I accepted the Chelsea one. I said yes, I’ll do it, I didn’t even ask about the money. I just thought: this is my calling.”

Now the club stand on the brink of winning their very first league title, earning the London-born coach comparisons with her men’s team counterpart, José Mourinho. Should Chelsea win against the already relegated Everton on Sunday, and defending champions Liverpool lose, as well as Birmingham, Hayes’s team will secure the title in front of a home crowd, with a game in hand.

Considering that Chelsea finished second from bottom last season, and endured a soul-destroying run of 10 defeats in 12 league games, Hayes’s achievement is near miraculous. Never mind the fact that she is the only female manager in the top tier of the FA Women’s Super League. (Soon she will be one of just two female managers out of 18 clubs in the top two leagues, following the announcement that Jayne Ludlow will leave Reading next month to take on the Wales job.)

“When I see all the boys in the top jobs across our leagues, I’m like: ‘Oh my God, the only woman sitting on top of the pile and I’m only there twice a week!’ It’s brilliant!”

Did she ever question what she was doing last season? “No, not at all,” says Hayes, adamant. “I always said to my staff I can handle it. You have to trust me. I’m willing to take the flak for it, just stand beside me.” What about her players? “Eni [Aluko] hated losing, but that’s one of the reasons I wanted her to stay – because she’s a winner.” How about her employers? “The club supported me. I was very clear from the outset, we might go backwards before we go forwards. We needed to gut this out. My boss, Emma Wilkinson, was very supportive of that. She was very patient. To be honest I enjoyed it. I enjoyed having the resolve to work through that.”

Hayes says getting fired from Chicago in 2010 “hardened” her as a coach. “I’ll never forget, Jill Ellis, the US national team coach, texted me and said: ‘Welcome to the coaching fraternity, you haven’t coached unless you’ve been fired.’ It was the most powerful thing anyone could have told me. Of course it hurt like hell, but it was an important learning curve.”

In a coaching career that began in her late teens – after an injury cut short her playing career at Arsenal – Hayes has been back and forth across the Atlantic developing her skills. Coaching qualifications (“I paid for every single one … I was always the only female”) jostled for position alongside a degree in European studies and a Masters in international affairs. Learning the ropes at Major League Soccer camps at the age of 23 after setting out with “a backpack and $1,000”, Hayes says she has coached almost every age bracket, across both genders.

Along the way she also collected an impressive list of mentors – from Akers to Raymond Verheijen, the renowned coach and conditioning specialist who taught Frank Rijkaard his trade, and most recently helped Argentina reach the World Cup final. The Dutchman’s interest in periodisation is a particular passion for Hayes, who has embedded his theories into her Chelsea set-up.

“The guy’s a genius,” says Hayes, enthusiastically, revealing that Mourinho’s own system contains many parallels. “More similarities than differences,” she nods. “There’s four factors: age, level they’ve just come from playing at, injury history and position they play in. So Eni, for example, she’s our Ferrari, she requires more petrol – or rest – than the others. Then there’s Claire Rafferty who’s had three ACL injuries …”

That bedding in work over last year laid the groundwork for a reworked team, to which she added new recruits, young and old, to make the difference this season. From foreign buys – including the South Korean midfielder, and Chelsea’s top scorer, Ji So-yun – to an English spine of experience in Katie Chapman and Laura Bassett.

Some will assume that Chelsea have splashed the cash, but Hayes is resolute. “We have only the fifth largest budget in the league – four teams around us have more than double our budget. And on full time managers, and full time staff … We don’t just throw money at things. We’ve got players playing on really little money who have bought into what we’re doing.”

She means restructuring the club, from integrating the academy, reserves and first team to overseeing the construction of a dedicated Ladies floodlit pitch and clubhouse.

Along the way the journey has been hard. Hayes works three jobs – running a family business in foreign exchange alongside appearances as an analyst for Eurosport, and the Chelsea role. She is at the training ground just twice a week with her players. Meanwhile, several of her coaches perform more than one role at the club, and even the squad itself is split between full and part-time playing contracts. For Hayes the day cannot come soon enough that everyone is a full-time professional.

For now, though, she is thrilled to be working for a club that has given her “carte blanche” to create her own vision. “I think Chelsea have been smart about it, they want to make sure the foundations are solid and that Chelsea Ladies will be around forever … make history.”

With the title race on a knife edge, Liverpool one point behind and chomping at the bit – albeit with a tougher run-in – and Birmingham also in the equation, it is Chelsea’s to lose.

Hayes shakes her head, no. “We’re playing for something bigger than ourselves. We’re playing for our young players to go on to be professional. I want success for so many people. I couldn’t give a crap about myself. It feels like I’m in a very selfless place in my life. And I feel blessed. I’m relaxed. I feel that this is what I was supposed to be doing.”